Antique 18th Century Bow Porcelain Figure of Female Musician

Desirable Hard Paste, Anchor Mark, Circa 1770-1776

This beautiful Bow figure of a woman playing a triangle has a desirable multi-colored floral background and is made of top quality hard paste porcelain. On the lower portion of the figure's base is a hand painted anchor mark, and on the figure's bottom are several impressed marks. S. G. Bernard Hughes, in English Pottery and Porcelain Figures, informs us that among decorators who impressed their marks on Bow porcelain figures, usually initials, was "Sprimont of Chelsea." According to Geoffrey A. Godden's Encyclopedia of British Pottery and Porcelain Marks, "the painted anchor...mark" as found on the rear side of this figure's base, "was the standard Bow mark from c. 1760 to 1776." Eberlain and Randall, in The Practical Book of Chinaware, make some very interesting observations: "much of the Bow paste, especially the later paste [1770-1776], is exceptionally hard, a quality perhaps to be accounted for by the presence of the bone-ash or some of the other ingredients subsequently used in the course of experimentation. It was doubtless this continued experimentation, in the effort to achieve hard paste or its nearest approximate, that caused the differences in the Bow body [earlier pieces were soft paste]. The late pieces are better potted than those of early make, thinner and of much whiter body.... The glaze of the whiter ware is harder and more brilliant."

Sold